Should communities be allowed (or encouraged) to die?

[kkt]

I don't think you could make a single rule that should apply to all circumstances.  Towns and cities have been competing with each other for various forms of help or hindrance for centuries.

If it's farmland, it's desirable for there to be a town within a couple of hours drive.  Back when that meant horses at 4 mph, towns every 8 miles were a desirable thing.  Now perhaps it could be towns every 100 miles.

[wxfree]

I don't think there's any reason to expect that a town should continue just because its existence was once justified.  There are many places that have died gracefully and left behind interesting relics.  State functions, such as law enforcement, cover the entire state, regardless of importance or population density.  In Texas, all land, even in national parks, is within a school district.  Decades ago, a lot of districts were consolidated, which is similar.  So, again, education isn't tied to importance or population.  Rural folks have their own water supply and wastewater disposal.

Questions arise when a town or city (using roughly accurate Texas terminology, that means unincorporated or incorporated place) is no longer able to support its infrastructure, or when the suitability of providing a state road is in doubt.  The first question somewhat answers itself, in that a system that can't be paid for will cease function and responsibility will devolve to the residents.  State intervention could be used to save the system.  I'd say that the state shouldn't allow a community to experience a crisis with sudden loss of water or wastewater service.  To get around to answering the question, I don't think the state should be expected to prop up the failing service, or government, indefinitely.  The people would be expected to start providing their own service or to move somewhere else.  As for roads, I don't think roads should be closed and leave previously served areas unserved (unless unpopulated), but a state highway could be downgraded or maintained at a lower standard.  Unless there's some abnormal condition, a road serving a barely-populated area and little through traffic shouldn't need too much funding to keep up, whether at the state or county level.

Places have been being abandoned forever.  I don't think there's any reason to think that shouldn't continue to happen.  I don't think anyone should be forcibly relocated, unless warranted by extreme circumstances, but community pride isn't enough to keep a place going.  I don't think a freeway should be directed to Carbonville to help out, but I would consider the little road there to be a perpetual liability until the area is depopulated to the level that a private drive would be sufficient, comparable with how private drives are used in other places in the area.

[Max Rockatansky]

Apparently they incorporated back in the 1920s which probably explains how a place with roughly 500 people stayed incorporated.  I know there is other places where Florida has looked at dissolving due to them just be too small in general.

Canada's Manitoba province has been pretty brutal about that process (of course, the basic political and constitutional rules are different north of the border). A few years ago it retroactively applied the minimum 1000 population threshold for new municipalities, to existing municipalities (usually rural) whose populations fell below the threshold after they were established ages ago. Such municipalities were generally forced into shotgun marriages with neighboring jurisdictions, to bring them over the threshold. There was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth (especially by the politicians who would lose their offices), but to no avail. The few small-population jurisdictions that remained were generally isolated communities within vast "unorganized" (unincorporated) areas, with no neighbors to be merged with or significant nearby populations to annex.

Arizona had some sort of rule like that, I can't recall if it was 1,500 or 2,000 residents though to incorporate.  I know that the legislature gives exemptions to certain places like Tusayan which just incorporated couple years back.  I guess the crux of why was due them being so close to a major tourist attraction, in this particular instance the Grand Canyon.  As far as Florida goes there doesn't appear to really be any steadfast rules on what can or can't be incorporated.  There are some strange ones in the Orlando area like Belle Isle, Pine Castle, and Edgewater which just seemed to be land grabs to avoid annexation.  You have weird places like Layton down the Keys which might not even have a hundred residents...or worse the old example of Elliott Key.  Then you have places like Spring Hill which is well over 100,000 people near Tampa but yet isn't incorporated....guess the retirees and snowbirds don't like big government. 

[bandit957]

In Texas, all land, even in national parks, is within a school district.

I'd think all land everywhere in the United States is within a school district. If a family with children might conceivably live on that land, they'd have to have a place to go to school.

[Desert Man]

It's a crying shame to allow cities and towns like Detroit, MI; Gary, IN or Welch, WV to die as a result of factory closures and deindustrialization. In CA, a few places are in a state of decline like Stockton, Yuba City and San Bernardino, but not the same way of total decrepit condition you find in older Midwest and east coast cities. A city needs to update and diversify an economy to stay alive, gain or keep population, and indeed make enough city revenue. For example, Tulsa OK was once the "world's oil capital", now the biggest employer from what I read is American Airlines. And Charlotte, NC, now the south's/SE US' largest city (850,000 residents?) can't rely on banking alone, they must have a huge sum based on real estate when so many people moved there.

[kphoger]

It's a crying shame to allow cities and towns like Detroit, MI; Gary, IN or Welch, WV to die as a result of factory closures and deindustrialization. In CA, a few places are in a state of decline like Stockton, Yuba City and San Bernardino, but not the same way of total decrepit condition you find in older Midwest and east coast cities. A city needs to update and diversify an economy to stay alive, gain or keep population, and indeed make enough city revenue. For example, Tulsa OK was once the "world's oil capital", now the biggest employer from what I read is American Airlines. And Charlotte, NC, now the south's/SE US' largest city (850,000 residents?) can't rely on banking alone, they must have a huge sum based on real estate when so many people moved there.

I think your definition of "die" is quite a bit different from mine.

[bing101]

Vallejo, CA did go bankrupt in 2008 during the recession. But in the case of Vallejo and to a certain extent the entire Solano county they did revitalized themselves as the place to house people who got priced out of San Francisco and also serve as a commuter county for both Sacramento and San Francisco Bay area right after the Mare Island ship yards closed down in 1996.  Note like Sacramento; Vallejo gets targeted by the rest of California for causing statewide deficits during the recession.

The few things going in Solano county's favor are that they team up with Sacramento County to do water deals with the rest of California, a commuter county for Sacramento/Davis area and San Francisco/Oakland area and biotech companies doing research near UC Davis for now.

[jwolfer]

Back in the 1800s a lot of towns were abandoned or moved when the railroad bypassed them. Gainesville FL was built because it was on the railroad, Newnanville and Hogtown were abandoned, but have been engulfed by Gainesville as it grew

[briantroutman]

On the other hand, I believe the government ought not to be in the business of deciding where people should and should not live.

...

In no instance (I suppose there might be a few exceptions), however, do I think it should actually aid in its death.

You make some interesting observations, but I think you're assuming that these small, declining towns would continue to exist in the absence of state interference. I'm inclined to believe that the opposite is true–that if not for the state redistributing out-of-area gas tax revenues to build and maintain roads, state funding of schools, state-mandates that force utilities to provide money-losing service to certain areas, etc., many declining towns would either die out or turn into the kind of dysfunctional disaster areas that state and federal governments typically don't allow to persist.

Your comments prompt some other points to consider–externalities which impact the economics of the matter but aren't economic issues themselves. For example, the idea that farmers need a certain critical mass of social, intellectual, and civic engagement in a nearby town in order to make their lives tolerable. And of course anything impacting farmers could theoretically set off a chain reaction: no farmers -> no farms -> no food -> no cities.

It's a crying shame to allow cities and towns like Detroit, MI; Gary, IN or Welch, WV to die as a result of factory closures and deindustrialization.

While Detroit isn't exactly the kind of dying town I had in mind, there is a meaningful connection to consider. I remember reading about Detroit's leaders wanting to "right size"  the city. While that term calls to mind a laughable euphemism for firing scores of workers, there is merit in trying to find a unique purpose on an achievable scale and creating a realistic plan to make it a reality. My perception is that many business and civic leaders seek to grow in any way, by any means, and to any level possible, leading them to support (and give public funding to) any wild-eyed schemer who promises to build...anything.

Vallejo, CA did go bankrupt in 2008 during the recession...

Any community that's in such close proximity to a major metropolitan area with a large and growing economy is in a different category because of its ability to serve as a commuter town and refuge from climbing real estate prices in the surrounding area. And even if Vallejo was allowed to disintegrate and was eventually bulldozed, I don't think it would make a major difference in the long run. Because of the Bay Area's extremely limited land resources, it would eventually be filled with shoulder-to-shoulder condos and tech industry office complexes.

[kkt]

And of course anything impacting farmers could theoretically set off a chain reaction: no farmers -> no farms -> no food -> no cities.

I'd certainly rather have fresh local food.  But it's not absolutely necessary.  Food for cities such as Santa Fe, Yellowknife, etc., comes from hundreds or thousands of miles away.  As long as the city can pay for it, nearby food production isn't essential.

[briantroutman]

^ I was actually thinking of the reverse scenario–where acreage of prime rural farmland would go underutilized if not for state and federal support of the small communities that serve as commercial and cultural centers for farmers.

[kkt]

Some, for sure.  Is there a public interest in maintaining as much farmland as we could possibly have?  Profit margins for all farms would probably go up if we didn't have more farms than we need.

[kalvado]

Some, for sure.  Is there a public interest in maintaining as much farmland as we could possibly have?  Profit margins for all farms would probably go up if we didn't have more farms than we need.

and in a while you realize there is not enough food and more has to be imported. Given US trade deficit, that is not a good idea.
I would say towns supporting farmland need assistance - but with manufacturing going across the ocean, and small scale manufacturing being specifically very low margin business, that is going to be tough.

[J N Winkler]

But my perception (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the vast majority of ghost towns "ghosted"  nearly a century ago or longer–before the era in which state and federal governments were large enough, powerful enough, and accepted it as their role to intervene and save the economy of a community.

This proposition is plausible, but I don't know if it is necessarily true.  It is definitely the case that the public sector allocates a higher percentage of GDP than was the case in Victorian times.  It does not necessarily follow that this translates into a more aggressive regional policy.

One of the few ghost towns I can think of in modern times is Centralia, PA, and in that case, there was an active danger threatening the community (mine fire), and active intervention of the state and federal governments was required to relocate residents–with some kicking and screaming, insisting that the entire episode was a conspiracy to deprive Centralians of billions of dollars of coal.

There are plenty of others.  I suspect Centralia is just the example that gets talked up in roadgeek circles, because of the Pennsylvania contingent.  Just in Kansas and Oklahoma there are multiple examples of modern ghost towns in connection with the Tri-State mining district.  Treece in Kansas and Picher and Cardin in Oklahoma have been forcibly disincorporated by the respective state legislatures.  The whole area is part of the Tar Creek Superfund site.  The chat piles are still there, though most of the side streets off US 69 are blocked off, and the buildings along US 69 itself are slowly succumbing to vandals (a recently set fire was still smouldering in two storefronts when I drove through in July 2015).

As a general rule, any area that plays host to a Superfund site is likely to have disincorporated municipalities.  Other areas that have had their economic raison d'être go away are in a form of managed decline.  For example, in Kansas we now subsidize out-of-state professionals to relocate to rural counties (most in western Kansas) that meet certain criteria to be designated "Rural Opportunity Zones."  South Dakota has been subsidizing lawyers to provide services to remote rural communities where it would otherwise be impossible to transact ordinary legal business like drawing up a will.

The degree to which such decline is managed, and how hard the landing is for the affected communities, is mostly a matter of political arbitrage within state legislatures.  So-called "citizen" legislatures are particularly likely to lack the will, let alone the intellectual firepower, to carry out a structured formal assessment of the costs and benefits of a subsidy program for economically underperforming areas.  However, the principle of one person, one vote is firmly entrenched in our jurisprudence, and when most of the votes are in large cities, that reality bites sooner or later.  A party whose ideological commitments cut across rural and suburban demographics (as is the case with the Republicans in flyover red states) at most delays the process.

I actually think improving highways in declining rural areas can be a poison pill for them because such investments add cumulatively to the logistical advantages of relocating to a larger population center where it is possible to obtain better returns to scale.

You can easily find reports on how much each state gets back in federal spending for every dollar collected in federal taxes. I think it would be interesting to see the same on an in-state basis. I suspect that the residents of Anystate are spending a lot of money to keep Carbonville going–for no other purpose than to keep Carbonville going.

The fiscal picture is not the same as the total economic picture.  It is necessary also to consider the costs of winding Carbonville down in some fashion that is considered politically acceptable, and then not having it as a producing unit of the economy (even at its current rather subdued level).  To pull the plug on subsidy without first making this analysis is to repeat the same mistake British Railways made with the Beeching axe.

[vdeane]

Some, for sure.  Is there a public interest in maintaining as much farmland as we could possibly have?  Profit margins for all farms would probably go up if we didn't have more farms than we need.

and in a while you realize there is not enough food and more has to be imported. Given US trade deficit, that is not a good idea.
I would say towns supporting farmland need assistance - but with manufacturing going across the ocean, and small scale manufacturing being specifically very low margin business, that is going to be tough.

We have more farm land than actual demand for food right now.  At one time, the federal government was paying farmers to not farm in order to keep agricultural prices from collapsing (since supply was greater than demand).  As far as I know, we still are.

[J N Winkler]

We have more farm land than actual demand for food right now.  At one time, the federal government was paying farmers to not farm in order to keep agricultural prices from collapsing (since supply was greater than demand).  As far as I know, we still are.

The real purpose of farm subsidy payments is to smooth out cyclical variation in agricultural commodity prices.  An underlying issue is that farming in arid and semi-arid areas, including much of the frontier-tier states, is supported by the Ogallala aquifer, which is being depleted far more rapidly than it is being recharged and so is essentially fossil water.  The scarcity of surface water from, e.g., the Arkansas and Republican Rivers has already given rise to a century's worth of water appropriation battles.  Absent an interregional or national aqueduct system to make fresh water from well-watered regions available for agricultural purposes or aquifer recharge, the buffalo commons may be the future.

The corollary to these backloaded problems is that the food we have now, that we consider to be cheap, may not in fact be cheap at all once its costs are fully internalized.

[sparker]

It's the rare transactional entity -- public or private sector -- that can or will fully internalize its real costs; the services or products that it provides would become so expensive as to outstrip the market for such.  Basic necessities have almost always been subsidized in one form or another, sometimes by direct public-sector action, but also by private providers to maintain market share.  Food, utilities (with the notable exception of media access in some areas), and even land use sees, for the most part, some level of collective public or even private subsidy. 

Disincorporation, in most jurisdictions, usually results in the next-largest entity (most often the county in which the disincorporated community was located) assuming jurisdictional responsibility for basic service, including schools, the prevailing welfare establishment in the area, etc.   The community, as an individualized identity, may officially die, but the land -- and the people residing on that land -- still remains, until the populace as a whole departs for "greener pastures", so to speak. 

I am unaware of any instance, at least here in CA, where the succeeding jurisdiction has actively sought to vacate an area that was disincorporated -- or has actively discontinued services in order to force evacuation; it has largely been up to the market to sort out the residential arrangement.  Several incorporated cities immediately south of Los Angeles (Vernon, Bell, et. al.) have been the subject of reorganization and/or disincorporation proceedings due to their disintegration into local oligarchy and/or massive levels of corruption; so far, the outcomes have featured jurisdictional changes -- but no actual moves to raze the towns to eliminate all traces of the original problem(s).  Actions taken, so far, have been limited to the offending parties/officials and not devolved to the general citizenry.  This may be a result of the fact that there are still active economic entities within those cities (although the aggregate economic picture for any or all may be bleak) that may be attractive for adjoining cities not part of the area's systemic corruption who may be considering annexation.  L.A. County won't want to be the default service provider in perpetuity! 

[SP Cook]

Here is my take on this as a life long Appalachian, and a person born in the above mentioned Welch, WV. 

If you study old Censuses you can learn a lot.  And then you can apply critical thinking to that.  Just to use McDowell County, WV as an example, in the 1850 Census it was the least populated county in Virginia.  1500 people.  And it still had less than 8K as late as 1890.  It peaked near 100K less than 50 years later.  And today 4 out of 5 of those people (well, their decendants, you know what I mean) have left. 

The same can be said about most any place in the coalfields region.   McDowell is extreme, but not atypical.  And, bluntly, many, maybe most, of those that remain, leaving out old people who are the last generation to have had a work life that yeilds a secure retirement and who have no next generation similarly situated to replace them when they die off, are people that are just happy to live a life on the dole, generally doped out of their minds.   People with ambition GTFO. 

Now let us apply some critical thinking.  It does not take much travel to find places with similar topography to the coal region, but with no coal.  And these places have a very different populational and social history.  Nobody much lives there.  Never did.  Never will.  The land simply cannot support more than a handful of marginal farmers and lumberjacks.  All it if fit for.  And, and this is the point, neither is the coal region but for the coal (be it mined out or illegalized by the currently in vogue junk science).  Ex-coal areas are still grossly overpopulated considering the topography. 

Today, mostly the state, but also the federal goverment spends billions to directly subsidize these places (welfare) and to provide all sort of indirect things (roads, schools, police, all the things governments do).  And today there are, just in southern WV, dozens of hare-brained schemes to "redevelop" or "reconnect" this or that place.  Many of these highway related (US 121, US 52, this Hobett boondoggle, WV 10, on and on) and many others as well.  And you can see the same in other states. 

And, if these things actually worked, then why did not we do them in the non-coal places decades ago?  For a simple reason.  They don't work.  Appalachia is for looking at, not for living in. 

So, would it not be a much more responsible for government to, one, say that as a part of general welfare reform, living in a place with no jobs is not a plan that we are going to subdize any more; two, use the money being spent on boondoggle ventures to subdize industry and on providing services these places can no longer provide for themselves, to buy out people and subsidize their move to places where the jobs are; and, three, to systematically reduce what is spent on places no on need live (stop repairing infastructure, consolidate schools, disincorporate towns, consolidate counties, close hospitals, etc) ?

It will cost society a whole lot less. It will work.  And the people affected, and their children, will be far better off in the long run.

[kalvado]

So, would it not be a much more responsible for government to, one, say that as a part of general welfare reform, living in a place with no jobs is not a plan that we are going to subdize any more; two, use the money being spent on boondoggle ventures to subdize industry and on providing services these places can no longer provide for themselves, to buy out people and subsidize their move to places where the jobs are; and, three, to systematically reduce what is spent on places no on need live (stop repairing infastructure, consolidate schools, disincorporate towns, consolidate counties, close hospitals, etc) ?

It will cost society a whole lot less. It will work.  And the people affected, and their children, will be far better off in the long run.

FOr me selecting the threshold is the biggest issue.
If you start cutting too hard, few years later there are 3 big cities (say NY, LA and Houston), with less important places like Chicago or SF deemed not worthy - not to mention anything smaller. Oh, and Houston is also considered too small among those 3.
This is taking things to extreme, of course - but really some town will always be at the bottom of the list and will be considered for elimination.  Reasons for spreading the population which were driving migration 200 years ago are less important by now: food can be brought over, mining and farming can be done with small seasonal groups, fresh water may be the biggest issue by now. You can squeeze amazing number of people into small footprint with skyscrapers.... 

[briantroutman]

One of the few ghost towns I can think of in modern times is Centralia, PA, and in that case, there was an active danger threatening the community...

There are plenty of others.  I suspect Centralia is just the example that gets talked up in roadgeek circles, because of the Pennsylvania contingent.  Just in Kansas and Oklahoma there are multiple examples of modern ghost towns in connection with the Tri-State mining district.

Right, but that supports the point I was making. Like in Centralia, the KS and OK towns you mentioned are examples of where government has intervened because of a disaster–in these cases, environmental. They're not ghost towns in the sense that local industry declined (in the absence of a disaster) and the state and federal governments simply stood back and allowed the town to wither.

But even so, there are two other distinctions between these Tri-State examples (as well as many other boom-and-bust towns) and my fictitious scenario which I think are important.

One is that the KS/OK ghost towns were never nearly as populous as Carbonville. Picher comes closest, having peaked at about 9,600 around 1920, but Treece never even cracked 1,000. There are certain buildings, institutions, elements of cultural identity, etc., that would be more likely to exist in a small city of 20-30,000 or more than isn't as likely to exist in a small town of a few thousand or a tiny settlement of hundreds.

The other difference is the towns' ages and growth curves. From what I've read, the Tri-State towns boomed practically overnight in the late 1910s, then began hemorrhaging population within their first decade. These growth patterns would produce quite a different local culture, dedication to local institutions, etc., than a city that was prosperous and functional for half a century or longer.

The fiscal picture is not the same as the total economic picture.

It's the rare transactional entity -- public or private sector -- that can or will fully internalize its real costs...

Your points are well taken, and I'll admit that a more thorough "accounting"  of all unseen or external costs and benefits of a community remaining in existence may make some marginal towns seem more justifiable. But I'm still inclined to believe that there are many communities in which economic output has dropped so sharply and where dependence on subsidy is so high that even the broadest and most generous assessment of the town's total fiscal and economic picture would lead to the conclusion that the town is a net drag on the remainder of the state and nation. But without data, however, it's your guess against mine.

Here is my take on this as a life long Appalachian, and a person born in the above mentioned Welch, WV. 

I was interested in getting your take on the topic considering your location. On the surface, I'm inclined to agree with the overall approach of redirecting funds that would have been used to subsidize an unsustainable industry or other redevelopment activity and use it instead to create incentives for relocation, perhaps career retraining, etc.

You'll sometimes see a shocking stat like: "...state and local taxpayers borrowed $60 million to build a Cabela's store and its supporting infrastructure in Buda, Texas. For that amount, every household in the 7,600-person community could have purchased a new 2012 Lexus CT Hybrid."  I wonder how much money currently wasted on doomed redevelopment schemes–and which ends up lining the pockets of politically connected "entrepreneurs" –could actually be used to make a meaningful difference in the lives of people who truly need help.

FOr me selecting the threshold is the biggest issue.
If you start cutting too hard, few years later there are 3 big cities (say NY, LA and Houston), with less important places like Chicago or SF deemed not worthy

...

really some town will always be at the bottom of the list and will be considered for elimination.

It's not a matter of axing the town at the bottom of the list simply because it's the smallest. We're talking about individual communities–most of them removed from other populated areas–which are not (or so I'm assuming) self-supporting...i.e. that without out-of-area tax dollars from state and federal governments, they could not continue to operate as functional communities.

[kalvado]

It's not a matter of axing the town at the bottom of the list simply because it's the smallest. We're talking about individual communities–most of them removed from other populated areas–which are not (or so I'm assuming) self-supporting...i.e. that without out-of-area tax dollars from state and federal governments, they could not continue to operate as functional communities.

Sorry, lost that during re-re-rereading.. Some town would be least performing because it smallest - or some other reason. As long as there is a system of wealth redistribution (known as multiple levels of government), there will be donors, who pay more - and those who get help.
Sometimes effects are not direct, but it makes sense to have some people in the area. Just random look at the map - Redding CA or Medford OR along I-5  - would it be better to have hundreds miles of uninhabited land around important corridor? Not to mention even smaller communities aalong highway..
I very well see your point about a town at the dead end of the road going to depleted mine - but there may be more criteria along social, cultural, maybe pride lines (do we really want to abandon flyover states someday? Inland Alaska?)
And then there are places for which  I don't understand their mere existence from the very beginning of times.  Maybe I am missing something, but International Falls MN seems an example... But it did exist for many hundred years..

[J N Winkler]

And then there are places for which  I don't understand their mere existence from the very beginning of times.  Maybe I am missing something, but International Falls MN seems an example... But it did exist for many hundred years..

It has the Boise Cascade paper mill, which offers tours to the general public--in fact it is one of AAA's star/"GEM" (Great Experience for Members) attractions for Minnesota.